I went again. My first trip had lasted only a few min- utes, my second a few hours. What was next? Days?
Kevin came in to tell me he was going. I didn’t want him to leave me alone, but I thought I had done enough whining for one morning. I kept my fear to myself—or I thought I did.
“You feel all right?” he asked me. “You don’t look so good.”
I had just had my first look in the mirror since the beating, and I didn’t think I looked so good either. I opened my mouth to reassure him, but before I could get the words out, I realized that something really was wrong. The room was beginning to darken and spin.
“Oh no,” I moaned. I closed my eyes against the sickening dizziness. Then I sat hugging the canvas bag and waiting.
Suddenly, Kevin was beside me holding me. I tried to push him away. I was afraid for him without knowing why. I shouted for him to let me go.
Then the walls around me and the bed beneath me vanished. I lay sprawled on the ground under a tree. Kevin lay beside me still holding me. Between us was the canvas bag.
“Oh God!” I muttered, sitting up. Kevin sat up too and looked around wildly. We were in the woods again, and it was day this time. The coun- try was much like what I remembered from my first trip, though there was no river in sight this time.
“It happened,” said Kevin. “It’s real!”
I took his hand and held it, glad of its familiarity. And yet I wished he
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were back at home. In this place, he was probably better protection for me than free papers would have been, but I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want this place to touch him except through me. But it was too late for that.
I looked around for Rufus, knowing that he must be nearby. He was. And the moment I saw him, I knew I was too late to get him out of trou- ble this time.
He was lying on the ground, his body curled in a small knot, his hands clutching one leg. Beside him was another boy, black, about twelve years old. All Rufus’s attention seemed to be on his leg, but the other boy had seen us. He might even have seen us appear from nowhere. That might be why he looked so frightened now.
I stood up and went over to Rufus. He didn’t see me at first. His face was twisted with pain and streaked with tears and dirt, but he wasn’t cry- ing aloud. Like the black boy, he looked about twelve years old.
“Rufus.”
He looked up, startled. “Dana?”
“Yes.” I was surprised that he recognized me after the years that had passed for him.
“I saw you again,” he said. “You were on a bed. Just as I started to fall, I saw you.”
“You did more than just see me,” I said. “I fell. My leg …”
“Who are you?” demanded the other boy.
“She’s all right, Nigel,” said Rufus. “She’s the one I told you about. The one who put out the fire that time.”
Nigel looked at me, then back at Rufus. “Can she fix your leg?” Rufus looked at me questioningly.
“I doubt it,” I said, “but let me see anyway.” I moved his hands away and as gently as I could, pulled his pants leg up. His leg was discolored and swollen. “Can you move your toes?” I asked.
He tried, managed to move two toes feebly.
“It’s broken,” commented Kevin. He had come closer to look. “Yes.” I looked at the other boy, Nigel. “Where’d he fall from?” “There.” The boy pointed upward. There was a tree limb hanging high
above us. A broken tree limb.
“You know where he lives?” I asked. “Sure. I live there too.”
The boy was probably a slave, I realized, the property of Rufus’s
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family.
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“You sure do talk funny,” said Nigel.
“Matter of opinion,” I said. “Look, if you care what happens to Rufus, you’d better go tell his father to send a … a wagon for him. He won’t be walking anywhere.”
“He could lean on me.”
“No. The best way for him to go home is flat on his back—the least painful way, anyhow. You go tell Rufus’s father that Rufus broke his leg. Tell him to send for the doctor. We’ll stay with Rufus until you get back with the wagon.”
“You?” He looked from me to Kevin, making no secret of the fact that he didn’t find us all that trustworthy. “How come you’re dressed like a man?” he asked me.
“Nigel,” said Kevin quietly, “don’t worry about how she’s dressed. Just go get some help for your friend.”
Friend?
Nigel gave Kevin a frightened glance, then looked at Rufus.
“Go, Nigel,” whispered Rufus. “It hurts something awful. Say I said for you to go.”
Nigel went, finally. Unhappily.
“What’s he afraid of ?” I asked Rufus. “Will he get into trouble for leaving you?”
“Maybe.” Rufus closed his eyes for a moment in pain. “Or for letting me get hurt. I hope not. It depends on whether anybody’s made Daddy mad lately.”
Well, Daddy hadn’t changed. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him at all. At least I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I glanced at Kevin. He knelt down beside me to take a closer look at Rufus’s leg.
“Good thing he was barefoot,” he said. “A shoe would have to be cut off that foot now.”
“Who’re you?” asked Rufus.
“My name’s Kevin—Kevin Franklin.” “Does Dana belong to you now?”
“In a way,” said Kevin. “She’s my wife.” “Wife?” Rufus squealed.
I sighed. “Kevin, I think we’d better demote me. In this time …” “Niggers can’t marry white people!” said Rufus.
I laid a hand on Kevin’s arm just in time to stop him from saying what- ever he would have said. The look on his face was enough to tell me he
should keep quiet.
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“The boy learned to talk that way from his mother,” I said softly. “And from his father, and probably from the slaves themselves.”
“Learned to talk what way?” asked Rufus.
“About niggers,” I said. “I don’t like that word, remember? Try call- ing me black or Negro or even colored.”
“What’s the use of saying all that? And how can you be married to him?”
“Rufe, how’d you like people to call you white trash when they talk to you?”
“What?” He started up angrily, forgetting his leg, then fell back. “I am not trash!” he whispered. “You damn black …”
“Hush, Rufe.” I put my hand on his shoulder to quiet him. Apparently I’d hit the nerve I’d aimed at. “I didn’t say you were trash. I said how’d you like to be called trash. I see you don’t like it. I don’t like being called nigger either.”
He lay silent, frowning at me as though I were speaking a foreign lan- guage. Maybe I was.
“Where we come from,” I said, “it’s vulgar and insulting for whites to call blacks niggers. Also, where we come from, whites and blacks can marry.”
“But it’s against the law.”
“It is here. But it isn’t where we come from.” “Where do you come from?”
I looked at Kevin.
“You asked for it,” he said. “You want to try telling him?” He shook his head. “No point.”
“Not for you, maybe. But for me …” I thought for a moment trying to find the right words. “This boy and I are liable to have a long association whether we like it or not. I want him to know.”
“Good luck.”
“Where do you come from?” repeated Rufus. “You sure don’t talk like anybody I ever heard.”
I frowned, thought, and finally shook my head. “Rufe, I want to tell you, but you probably won’t understand. We don’t understand ourselves, really.”
“I already don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t know how I can see you when you’re not here, or how you get here, or anything. My leg hurts so
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much I can’t even think about it.”
“Let’s wait then. When you feel better …”
“When I feel better, maybe you’ll be gone. Dana, tell me!”
“All right, I’ll try. Have you ever heard of a place called California?” “Yeah. Mama’s cousin went there on a ship.”
Luck. “Well, that’s where we’re from. California. But … it’s not the California your
